CakePHP View including other views

Question

I have a CakePHP application that in some moment will show a view with product media (pictures or videos) I want to know if, there is someway to include another view that threats the video or threats the pictures, depending on a flag. I want to use those "small views" to several other purposes, so It should be "like" a cake component, for reutilization.

What you guys suggest to use to be in Cake conventions (and not using a raw include('') command)

Answer 1

In the interest of having the information here in case someone stumbles upon this, it is important to note that the solution varies depending on the CakePHP version.

For CakePHP 1.1

$this->renderElement('display', array('flag' => 'value'));

in your view, and then in /app/views/elements/ you can make a file called display.thtml, where $flag will have the value of whatever you pass to it.

For CakePHP 1.2

$this->element('display', array('flag' => 'value'));

in your view, and then in /app/views/elements/ you can make a file called display.ctp, where $flag will have the value of whatever you pass to it.

---

In both versions the element will have access to all the data the view has access to + any values you pass to it. Furthermore, as someone pointed out, requestAction() is also an option, but it can take a heavy toll in performance if done without using cache, since it has to go through all the steps a normal action would.

Answer 2

In your controller (in this example the posts controller).

function something() {
    return $this->Post->find('all');
}

In your elements directory (app/views/element) create a file called posts.ctp.

In posts.ctp:

$posts = $this->requestAction('posts/something'); 
foreach($posts as $post): 
    echo $post['Post']['title']; 
endforeach; 

Then in your view:

<?php echo $this->element('posts'); ?>

This is mostly taken from the CakePHP book here: Creating Reusable Elements with requestAction

I do believe that using requestAction is quite expensive, so you will want to look into caching.

Answer 3

Simply use:

<?php include('/<other_view>.ctp'); ?>

in the .ctp your action ends up in.

For example, build an archived function

function archived() {
  // do some stuff
  // you can even hook the index() function
  $myscope = array("archived = 1");
  $this->index($myscope);
  // coming back, so the archived view will be launched
  $this->set("is_archived", true); // e.g. use this in your index.ctp for customization
}

Possibly adjust your index action:

function index($scope = array()) {
  // ...
  $this->set(items, $this->paginate($scope));
}

Your archive.ctp will be:

<?php include('/index.ctp'); ?>

Ideal reuse of code of controller actions and views.

Answer 4

For CakePHP 2.x

New for Cake 2.x is the abilty to extend a given view. So while elements are great for having little bits of reusable code, extending a view allows you to reuse whole views.

See the manual for more/better information

http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/views.html#extending-views